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Halp
Does anyone happen to have any online resources for writing physical descriptions? Or, for those of you who are visual artists, things you need to get in references or written desc?
My big problem is not being sure what to include in an in-depth description, because I have the great trifecta of severe visual impairment, aphantasia and prosopagnosia -- therefore visual things are pretty meaningless to me (in both directions: I also can't parse written physical description and just ask for a picture, which confuses people a lot when I say I have trouble seeing! if you send me a picture I can get my face real close to itand understand it, but a physical description doesn't help at all) and so I don't know what to include.
When an artist asks me for a detailed description, or a role-playing game requires 2-3 paragraphs on appearance in a character sheet, I ... have no idea what to put there besides coloring, height, weight/build/body shape and a little bit about dressing style. With medical-types I sometimes remember to put in a line about their hands.
And I really need a better cheat sheet of all the things I forget.
My big problem is not being sure what to include in an in-depth description, because I have the great trifecta of severe visual impairment, aphantasia and prosopagnosia -- therefore visual things are pretty meaningless to me (in both directions: I also can't parse written physical description and just ask for a picture, which confuses people a lot when I say I have trouble seeing! if you send me a picture I can get my face real close to itand understand it, but a physical description doesn't help at all) and so I don't know what to include.
When an artist asks me for a detailed description, or a role-playing game requires 2-3 paragraphs on appearance in a character sheet, I ... have no idea what to put there besides coloring, height, weight/build/body shape and a little bit about dressing style. With medical-types I sometimes remember to put in a line about their hands.
And I really need a better cheat sheet of all the things I forget.
no subject
I like that better than an in-depth physical description, although important features, costumes, and props should definitely be mentioned. Photos of people who look like the character in the commissioner's eye are good, because that goes a long way to clearing up exactly what each person means by a word--I had to go back-and-forth with sketches on what "determined expression" meant to one person, and it turns out that we had completely different ideas on what that meant. (I thought it meant "serious and hard" and what the guy meant was "pleasant, not smiling.")
As regards characters' features and their personality: stereotypical, I know. But in a portrait a nervous, squirrelly person is going to look and stand differently than an outgoing, complacent one because in art you want the picture to communicate the character's personality--I'd draw the first one with tight, closed-in body language and a suspicious, worried expression and the second with open body language and a pleasant face.